Climbing to Success:
The Comic Art of Harold Lloyd
[Sept. 2004, Composition]
“They are
tearing the arms off the chairs and laughing so loudly the organist can’t hear
himself play,” exclaimed a theater manager in
Lloyd’s
first stage role came before he was ten years old, a small part in a production
of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (Vance 18).
He inherited a passion for theater from his mother, and as a boy continued to
act whenever given the chance. Through diligent study, he became knowledgeable
about staging and make-up by his early teen years. Lloyd played regularly in a
The
beginning of Harold Lloyd’s career coincided with that of another man soon to
be famous in film: Hal Roach, director of the Our Gang Comedies and early
Laurel and Hardy shorts. Lloyd met him working as another actor at Universal;
and when Roach left to start his own film studio, he took Lloyd with him to
star in his short films (Vance 20). After many flops, they achieved a contract
with the distribution company Pathé and began
production of a steady stream of shorts featuring the staple comedic material
of the day: pretty girls, cops, flying pies, and wildly far-fetched slapstick
routines. Harold Lloyd gained his first public recognition as ‘Lonesome Luke,’
a blatantly Chaplinesque tramp character. He was in
later years embarrassed over these films (Dardis 38);
but contemporary audiences loved them, and their popularity grew steadily.
In a major
turning point of his career, Lloyd retired ‘Lonesome Luke’ in 1917 and
established a brand new persona that he called the ‘Glasses Character’ (Dardis 50). Compared with the outlandish tramp costume, the
‘Glasses Character’ was plain with his studious horn-rimmed glasses. The
character possessed a “boy next door” quality (Lloyd, qtd.
in Dardis 5) that made him sympathetic and allowed
for more sophisticated comedy: “[…] when something devastating happened to him,
it had the precious quality of the unexpected, and for audience reactions was
infinitely funnier than if he’d worn a zany make-up ” (Roach, qtd. in Schickel
36). The horn-rimmed glasses soon became Lloyd’s universally known trademark.
When he ordered a new pair from a New York optical firm in 1918 to replace his
broken set, they sent twenty at no cost in gratitude for the immense popularity
he had given that style of eyewear (D’Agostino 23).
All of
Lloyd’s work up to this point had been in short one or two reel films. Critics
of those days largely frowned upon comedy, so while drama features were
commonplace, it was not until Chaplin’s 1920 release of The Kid that a major silent film star produced a feature length
comedy (Dardis 97, 99). Lloyd became the second in
1921 with A Sailor-Made Man, though
this achievement was actually an accident. The film began as a two reel short,
but it ended up with extra material that the filmmakers considered too good to
waste, so they left it uncut and advertised it as Lloyd’s first feature. It
does have the feel of a short film gone long, with thin storyline and
characterizations. However, it abounds with the humor that made Lloyd’s comedy
so popular and did very well at the box office. It served as a bridge from
short films to the features that would bring Lloyd to the full height of his
fame and comedic skill (D’Agostino 30).
Within his
established persona, Lloyd still had room for variety among the roles he
played. Lloyd’s second feature, Grandma’s
Boy (1922), exhibited much better integration of the storyline and comedy,
as well as the first real character development in Lloyd’s screen work. He plays a cowardly
young man who rallies to defeat the villain and win the girl with the aid of a
magic talisman given to him by his grandmother. Of course, as he discovers in
the end, the talisman is nothing more than an old umbrella handle. He learns
that confidence in his own ability to overcome had been all he had needed all
along. This theme of the underdog finding the ability to overcome is common to
many of his films. Another of Lloyd’s recurring roles is that of the young
millionaire. He used it to great comedic advantage in Why Worry? (1923) in the role of a wealthy hypochondriac who
travels to the tropics for his health. Typical of the character is one scene in
which he is informed soon after arrival that the country is in the midst of a
revolution. “Tell them to stop it,” he indignantly replies via a title screen. “I came down here to rest” (qtd. in Dardis 135). The film continues with a series of
misadventures in which Lloyd’s character remains hilariously oblivious to his
peril, calmly taking on the entire revolutionary force just so he can finally
get some peace and quiet.
Lloyd
employed a wide range of comedy techniques. The opening sequence of Safety Last! (1923) shows a despondent
Lloyd bidding farewell to his tearful young lover and mother through iron bars,
while a uniformed man stands at his side and a noose rope swings ominously in the
background. Then the camera pulls back; suddenly the audience realizes that
they have fallen for a trick: Lloyd is actually at the train station and the
“noose” turns out merely to be a messenger rope hanging by the track. Lloyd
made effective use of similar creative camera gags in many of his films. Much
of his comedy also stems from the personality of his character. The “Glasses
Character” represents the go-getter attitude of
American youth developed to extremes. He is often so intent upon his goal that
he will do anything to achieve it, no matter how ridiculous. Coupled with the
ingeniousness of the character’s solutions to his problems, this makes for some
hilarious sequences. In For Heaven’s Sake
(1926), Lloyd promises his sweetheart to bring the poolroom riff-raff to her
father’s inner-city mission. Persuasion failing, he proceeds to kick, trip, and
otherwise insult every derelict within sight in order to provoke them to the
chase so that they will follow him into the mission.
Another
element in Lloyd’s comedy gave him the name “King of Daredevil Comedy” (Dardis 125), and these stunts now loom large in his
remembered image. Many people, if they know nothing else about Harold Lloyd,
have seen a picture or video clip of him hanging from the minute hand of a
tower clock a dozen stories above the street in Safety Last!.
The rumor (which Lloyd’s publicity staff were perfectly content not to
discredit) that he personally performed all the stunts portrayed in the film is
not strictly true. The film crew built sets on the roofs of city buildings to
create the illusion of height compared with the street below and employed a
double in the long shots (Dardis 119). Lloyd did
actually do the climbing in the close-up shots to a height of two stories. This
is an amazing feat and a testament to his dedication, considering the fact that
he suffered the loss of his right thumb and forefinger in an accident several
years earlier (Vance 41).
Lloyd filmed
nine silent features with tremendous success, but at the height of his
popularity, the world of film underwent a revolution that was to change
At the
height of his career, Lloyd was the most popular film comedian of his time. A
1922 poll showed Lloyd surpassing Chaplin by a wide margin (Dardis
99). Today’s audiences, however, remember little of his work. A concern about
maintaining the dignity of his films in the ruthless editing for television
kept Lloyd from re-releasing his films later in life, having the unfortunate
result of keeping his films out of public access. However, his granddaughter
Suzanne Lloyd recently brought his films out of the vault and made the
long-delayed release to television, bringing a renewed interest in his work.
Many people have the impression of most silent films as crudely made and
uninteresting in an age of special effects and complex spoken dialogue. Harold
Lloyd proves that stereotype wrong as his clever and sophisticated comedies
continue to make people laugh.
Works Cited
D’Agostino, Annette M. Harold Lloyd: a Bio-Bibliography.
Dardis, Tom. Harold Lloyd: the Man on the Clock.
Schickel, Richard. Harold Lloyd: the Shape of Laughter.
Vance, Jeffery, and
Suzanne Lloyd. Harold
Lloyd: Master Comedian.